First human embryo is cloned

Emergency legislation to ban human cloning in Britain was today being rushed through the House of Lords, a day after American scientists announced a breakthrough in creating human embryos.

The new laws, drawn up to close a legal loophole in Britain after the High Court ruled that cloning humans was not illegal, would not have outlawed the American research.

The private research company behind yesterday's breakthrough said its scientists had produced "preimplantation embryos" but were aiming to use them for research to treat disease, not to create a cloned human being.

The new legislation on embryo research going through the Lords today, and the Commons on Thursday, would ban cloned embryos from being implanted into wombs but does not ban therapeutic cloning using cell nuclear replacement for research - the technique used by the American firm and to produce Dolly the sheep.

Maverick scientists including Italian fertility doctor Severino Antinori have said the High Court's ruling means they could create cloned embryos in Britain and implant them before the emergency legislation could be brought in.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats last night said they both supported the new legislation.

However, John Smeaton, national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said: "This underlines the need for the Government's Bill to be fundamentally changed so that all forms of human cloning, both experimental cloning and cloning for child birth, are completely banned."

Human embryo clones have become a "holy grail" in the scientific community because the embryos contain stem cells, which can be used to create virtually any human tissue.

They are potentially vital for transplant operations and for therapies for conditions including strokes, cancer, Aids, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.

The American firm, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), based in Worcester, Massachusetts, announced its breakthrough in an online journal, e-biomed, which said it was "the first proof that reprogrammed human cells can supply tissue for transplantation".

The firm said it had cloned embryos by removing the DNA from human egg cells.

The DNA from an adult human body cell was then implanted into the egg cell, which was then stimulated to grow into a six-cell embryo.

One of the ACT team, Dr Michael West, said the firm had no plans to clone a human being.

"We could implant these cells into a woman's uterus and make a cloned human being, but that's not what we are doing. We are doing it to help cure diseases," he told CNN.

"We are making cellular life, not a human life. A human life begins upwards of two weeks into development. We have this little bundle of cells."

He admitted other scientists might be able to use his team's technology to clone a human being, but said the risks of that for the pregnant woman or the clone were not yet known.

Dr West said it would be a few years until his technology could be applied to curing diseases, adding: "These are the first faltering steps towards this new area of medicine."

Dr Ian Wilmut, who led the team which produced the Dolly the sheep clone at the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, said the report was a "very preliminary observation".

"It's almost impossible to know how far off they could be (from creating usable stem cells) but there's nothing in this report to suggest that the technique could be made to work immediately," he said.

But Dr Patrick Dixon, an authority on the ethics of human cloning, warned the breakthrough could open the door to producing full-scale human clones.

"It is now only a matter of time before a clone human is born," he told PA News.

"There are huge potential risks in that process, including grotesque mutations and hidden disabilities.

"It will undoubtedly result in the creation of a significant number of mutated human embryos and may be the birth of some clones, which will probably die later."

Dr Dixon called for global legislation to prevent clone embryos being legally produced for research in one part of the world, then implanted into women in a country where it was not banned.